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Nostolgia for the collecting era

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Warmsignal:
Anyone else get the warm and fuzzies for the good ole' days of game collecting? I'm a very nostalgic person by nature; as soon as an era of life comes to a close and another begins, I start to feel a lot of nostalgia for the previous bygone era. So here we are, light-years into the dystopian future and now it's no longer just nostalgia for our gaming memories of our childhood, but nostalgia for when we collected games as adults.

These days, I feel nostalgic for the era when I first got into collecting games. It doesn't seem like it, but that was quite a long time ago now. I was a young adult, just out of high-school and looking for some kind of hobby to pick up. I hadn't played video games in several years, but I just decided to start watching YouTube videos about people who were buying old games for classic game systems. At the time, there weren't even that many, just a handful of vloggers with their grainy digital cameras showing off their Saturn or SNES collections in their bedroom. That's all it took to inspire me to get into it myself. Finally had my own money, and I figured this stuff would be easy to get because it's old and nobody wants it. Wasn't exactly true, but of course it was infinitely more doable then.

Aside from reasonable pricing and availability, what I think was so much fun about that era was just being completely ignorant to all of these retro games that I'd never heard of, and discovering the games as I went along collecting. Going out with 20$ in my wallet and coming back with a bag of games that I'd never played before. The hunt itself seemed endless at the time, it felt like everywhere you went there were video games for sale. Not just the second hand market, but in retail, every store was dabbling in video game sales at that time. Even drug stores had video games, as physical media was at peak saturation. I couldn't stay content to just collect retro, so I dove into the current scene, knowing nothing about 360 or Wii and discovering several years worth of titles I knew nothing about more or less gave me the same feeling about hunting and collecting modern games too.

You really had to be there, to experience it in this exact way, and lot of you here were, so you know what I'm talking about. Getting into game collecting at that specific time period during the late 2000s / early 2010s is something that can never again be replicated. If you sold everything you owned and attempted to start over, it would be nothing the same. Not only because that era has passed, but because you can only experience something for the first time once. It would just never feel the same again. All the younger folks getting into it over the past few years, they'll never know what it was like when we did it.

I would say the golden years were over by around the time I first joined this forum, 2013/14 or so? Game collecting was getting so popular, and so competitive already by that point, you couldn't find stuff the way you did in the years before. This is when it started to go from being purely a joy, to sort of a chore. You had to be more crafty, more diligent. The world was slowly turning to shit because everybody was getting a smart phone and corporations were beginning to take over the Internet and subsequently destroy society. So there's this sort of split between game collecting in the old days before Internet was real life, and you would just use it to communicate about your real world findings, and then the era after it had taken over where there was little left out there in the real world to find, but everyone online had everything that you wanted and was dangling it over your head like a carrot. I'm not so nostalgic for that era where it all got tougher and tougher, and was mostly relegated to buying things online. The fun was all but gone by that point, especially by the later 2010s.

Once the pandemic hit, the hobby was wrecked. I continued on collecting for several more years beyond that, but it was honestly painful at that point, not fun at all. I haven't actively been a game collector in nearly two years. I don't really miss it, because of what it eventually came to be. I do think of the early days a lot, hence the topic. At this point, I know all of the retro libraries quite well. The sense of discovery is gone, I own most of what I ever wanted, everything feels like a ridiculous waste of money now... the past can't be repeated, is the point. You had to be there. I'm just thankful I'm not subject to the present day, where all the most followed and praised hacks of the retro gaming scene, are all these reseller jerks. Those clowns were probably still in daycare when we started collecting. Little did we know they'd come along to turn the entire hobby into a racket a decade later. If you just want to play the games, you're probably just modding or emulating at this point.

So, that's kind of my ramble on video game collecting nostalgia, without getting too much into the specifics. The memories of first beginning my Saturn and Sega CD collections, going to the flea markets and picking up loads of Nintendo cartridges, buying the newly released Nintendo DSi and knowing nothing about the rich DS library that awaited me, etc, all replaying in my mind with a black and white grainy filter, because it feels like ancient history. Looking back, it was definitely one of the most fun times I've ever had, particularly the period from '09 to roughly 2012? My only regret was that I took it a little too far, and forced myself to stick with it longer than I should have through the years, at some point I did let the fixation almost consume me. Finally beyond that now, and I don't think about game collect much at all anymore. Aside from those early days, maybe I just miss the past in general.

ignition365:
That's why I'm so seldom here, I'm just not about collecting anymore.  I find that joy tangentially via finding indie games on Steam these days

Not the same, but it's fun to find new games that you've never heard of that look cool.

I do miss the days of going out and hitting pawn shops, thrift stores, yard sales, flea markets, etc. for deals, but yeah, as soon as pandemic hit a lot of people turned to selling online and truly realized they didn't need to sell things for dirt cheap.  I've popped into a few places over the last few years and pawn shops don't have games because they sell online, thrift stores don't have games because they sell online, yard sales price to match ebay/gamestop, and I wouldn't be caught at a flea market anymore. 

I've considered selling stuff myself just to get rid of stuff I know I'd never play these days, but I see that I could sell a game for $20, but shipping would cost me $5, market would take $2-3, payment processor would take $1 or so, I'd probably not even wind up selling it for $20 with a best offer price, and likely I'd have to deal with stupid people just to make $10 on a game I probably paid more than $10 on... and unfortunately, Gamestop and the like offer even less, paying $2-5 for a game that sells for $20, that they will probably list for $40 and that's for store credit.  If someone offered me like 70% of VGPC for the majority of my collection, I'd probably take it, no questions asked.

Warmsignal:

--- Quote from: ignition365 on January 20, 2026, 01:02:45 pm ---That's why I'm so seldom here, I'm just not about collecting anymore.  I find that joy tangentially via finding indie games on Steam these days

Not the same, but it's fun to find new games that you've never heard of that look cool.

I do miss the days of going out and hitting pawn shops, thrift stores, yard sales, flea markets, etc. for deals, but yeah, as soon as pandemic hit a lot of people turned to selling online and truly realized they didn't need to sell things for dirt cheap.  I've popped into a few places over the last few years and pawn shops don't have games because they sell online, thrift stores don't have games because they sell online, yard sales price to match ebay/gamestop, and I wouldn't be caught at a flea market anymore. 

I've considered selling stuff myself just to get rid of stuff I know I'd never play these days, but I see that I could sell a game for $20, but shipping would cost me $5, market would take $2-3, payment processor would take $1 or so, I'd probably not even wind up selling it for $20 with a best offer price, and likely I'd have to deal with stupid people just to make $10 on a game I probably paid more than $10 on... and unfortunately, Gamestop and the like offer even less, paying $2-5 for a game that sells for $20, that they will probably list for $40 and that's for store credit.  If someone offered me like 70% of VGPC for the majority of my collection, I'd probably take it, no questions asked.

--- End quote ---

With video games, it always feels like buy high and sell low. Probably because we don't realize all the trouble they went to just to sell us something. It takes money to make money, unless someone finds that they just happen to be sitting on a gold mine, otherwise they're paying, paying and paying more out the ass, just to be able to sell and end up slightly ahead.

I want full blown retail and I want cash for my collection, local pickup only, or else it's staying with me the rest of my life. Too many years and too much effort into it, to simply liquidate it for some reselling fool.

bikingjahuty:
Oh absolutely!


I started collecting in 2008, but my video game collectorism really took off in 2010. I had just freshly graduated college, my girlfriend, now wife, and I had just moved into our first place together, and I had recently started my first real job, which didn't pay a ton, but enough to fuel my collecting hobby, at least at the time. I lived for the hunt and would visit thrift stores daily, religiously refresh Craigslist for deals, and on the weekends, I was a regular at my local flea market. There were also a ton of indie video game stores and second hand media stores (ie. Gohastings, Entertainmart, 2nd and Charles) within a 40 mile radius of me. At least for the first few years I was collecting, very few other people were doing it which meant tons of deals. The deals were really the best part; I'd go to the flea market with $60 and come home with 30+ games and consoles, none of which I'd even consider filler.


On top of all that, the youtube gaming scene was really starting to take off around the time I heavily got into collecting, so I was constantly learning about all sorts of games for older consoles I'd never even heard of or completely overlooked when I was younger. It was just an fun, interesting, and productive time to be a game collector and I threw myself into it all 110% at the time and loved ever minute of it.


I feel like the writing on the wall about these good times coming to an end began to show its ugly head around 2013 for me. Nearly every place I used to go hunting for games had become less and less lucrative. Beyond just way more collectors and resellers visiting these same places for games being a factor in this, many of these places, especially thrift stores and second hand media shops began to get "collector employees" who seemingly worked at these businesses just to snipe the video games as soon as they were brought in. The worst place I used to hunt for games that fell victim to this was a media store called Tradesmart. By about 2015, it seemed like half the employees that worked there were either collectors, resellers, or a combo of both. I had to get very aggressive and clever to even stand a chance of getting any desireable games from that store, which of course made me the target of ire from most of the staff that worked there. I'd later find out from a former employee of that store, that it wasn't just me, but the employees were literally fighting amongst themselves over games that were brought in on trade. But yeah, it was around 2015/2016 especially that I realized collecting games, and more specifically hunting for deals on them, had become noticeably less fun for me, but it was still my primary hobby.


I feel like my collecting era officially died in 2017 thanks to me being forced to sell off a decent chunk of my collection to fund what insurance wouldn't pay for back to back medical emergencies. I didn't immediately go, "welp, I'm not a game collector anymore! That's that!" but rather it was the gradual realization that by that point I'd acquired 90% of all the games I'd ever wanted and also that my games were far less important to me than I'd originally thought. Having to sell so many of them, especially some real heavy hitters was the catalyst for me realizing this. Still, I fought against my diminishing interest in collecting by trying to collect more for systems I'd previously only collected casually for, or trying to collect boxes and manuals for loose cart based games I owned. Still, every time I'd acquire some new US Saturn game or a new box for an N64 game I owned, I noticed myself experiencing less and less joy as a result.


I feel like the moment I had where I realized I was more or less done collecting games, especially retro games, was shortly after I moved in 2022 and met up with a local collector who was selling off a bunch of his games to make way for his first child which was on its way. I bought a ton of Genesis and Saturn games off him for around two grand. As I was on my way home from doing this, I realized I felt practically nothing for the huge score I'd just acquired. I got home, put the games on my shelf, and went about my business as usual, just $2000 poorer.


At least by the strictest sense of what a collector is, I guess I still am technically a collector, but I certainly don't maintain a massive list of games I'm after like I used to. I buy almost no retro games now thanks to flash carts and ODEs satisfying me there, as well as all the retro games I still have. I still buy and add a ton of modern games to my collection, but only stuff that I have immediate plans to play. And unlike in the past, if I play a game and don't like it, or realize maybe I'm less interested in the game than I originally thought, I have zero reservations about selling it. As I said earlier, I'm far less attached to my games than I once was, which overall I feel like is a good thing.


But yeah, sorry for the massive tangent there.


tl,dr: I have a ton of nostalgia for my collecting era between 2008 and 2022, and especially between 2010 and 2014. Those were such fun, special years for me. I acquired literally thousands of games during that 4 year period, most of which I bought for a bargain. Deals were everywhere, some of the best places I've ever looked for video games were still around, and I also met a ton of great collectors too during this time. Also, the online zeitgeist around gaming felt so alive and vibrant around this time. Hell, it's during this time I joined VGcollect and my most wonderful memories of using this site were during the first 5 or so years I was here. I do miss that time and even though most of the places I used to buy games at are gone, the world has changed heavily since then, and so have I, I still remember that era maybe just as fondly as I do being a young kid and experiencing some of those older games for the very first time when they were brand new.

Warmsignal:

--- Quote from: bikingjahuty on January 20, 2026, 02:33:01 pm ---But yeah, sorry for the massive tangent there.


tl,dr: I have a ton of nostalgia for my collecting era between 2008 and 2022, and especially between 2010 and 2014. Those were such fun, special years for me. I acquired literally thousands of games during that 4 year period, most of which I bought for a bargain. Deals were everywhere, some of the best places I've ever looked for video games were still around, and I also met a ton of great collectors too during this time. Also, the online zeitgeist around gaming felt so alive and vibrant around this time. Hell, it's during this time I joined VGcollect and my most wonderful memories of using this site were during the first 5 or so years I was here. I do miss that time and even though most of the places I used to buy games at are gone, the world has changed heavily since then, and so have I, I still remember that era maybe just as fondly as I do being a young kid and experiencing some of those older games for the very first time when they were brand new.

--- End quote ---

No apologies necessary, the tangents are the reason for the thread. I like the stories. Sounds as though we had a similar trajectory in game collecting.

Although, when I started out I had very limited amount of money I could spend on the hobby. At the time, you really didn't need a ton of money, but it would've helped of course. It always seemed to me, like the more money I had to spend on games, the more the prices would continue to rise, resulting in making it just as difficult as it was before regardless of what I had to spend.

Around here, I didn't have a ton of brick & mortar game stores besides GameStop, but back then I loved those stores. I used to go to GameStop so much that I felt self-conscious about the employees seeing me come in all of the time, and that was between three different stores that used to be in my town. I would hit them almost on a daily basis, checking for new trade-ins, price drops, and clearance stuff. Man, Nintendo DS games were so cheap and plentiful there back in those days. Of course, most people then still felt like DS was a gimmicky child's console that would never be worth collecting for a serious gamer. So I would regularly pick up $10 DS games that are now going for $100+ today. I probably spent thousands of dollars buying super cheaply priced games at those stores over the years. That's why it guts me to go in there these days, and the whole store has like 20 games over in the corner, and the rest is all a bunch of non-game junk. You have like 10 Switch 2 games on the shelf, and 3/4 of them are key-cards. I don't think the joy of the hobby could be any further obliterated than it is, short of every major video game company shutting down completely, which seems like that's not too far off.

I remember discovering that you could buy used games at Blockbuster, they had some pretty good deals too. We never had anything like Hastings here, but I did order from their website one time. It's funny how I can still point to any game on my shelf that I got all those years back, and could still tell you where I got it at, and roughly how much I spent on it. That stuff is just etched into my memory for some reason. A lot of my retro came from flea markets, and Salvation Army (because Goodwill here never put any video game stuff on the floor) and a few pawn shops. Aside from that I was always at GameStop, Blockbuster, and Kmart. A lot of people didn't realize how good Kmart was for modern game deals back then, because nobody ever shopped at those stores, their video game department would always mark the prices down little by little and you could get sealed games for like $10 - $20, where other places were still asking MSRP for the same game, so I did that a lot. CheapAssGamer used to have a dedicated Kmart price-list thread that I would follow regularly. The guys over there had so much pull with that thread they made some sort of connection with a guy who worked for Kmart corp and started I believe it was a loyalty program called Kmart Gamer which latest for all of a few months. I remember trying to pre-order a game there one time, and the manager had no idea of anything about it and he's like "why don't they just wait until we have the product before they make us sell it", but he somehow managed to do something on the register and give me a pre-sale receipt. It was so disorganized and half-assed, I don't know how it even become a thing there for a bit.

Then there was the time I went to look at some guy's games advertised in a local ad. I got there, ring the doorbell and slip and fell into deep snow. I get up, he opens the door and invites me in and I'm covered in snow head to toe, looking like Jack Frost while I'm melting in his living room. Didn't end up buying squat from him, but hey I got the memory. I'll never forget that. Good times, good times.

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